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Hampshire Avon - Ringwood to Christchurch

Yesterday my friend and I paddled from Ringwood to Christchurch and came face to face with the famous 'water bailiff'. I misheard and thought 'Lord Baylish' was coming to get us. We called his bluff and paddled on after he threatened us. Don't be put off. You can just paddle away... there is nothing he can do. The spot was the Bisterne Fishery. He told us we were paddling through a private estate, which I'm sure was true, but irrelevant. You can't own the water and since we were floating, not touching the river bed, we were fine. He was very aggressive but we had the upper hand as he obviously didn't want to get his feet wet!

Other interesting points: we saw an otter (I think it winked at me), we saw a kingfisher, herons, egrets, 1000 swans, negotiated a fallen tree, went over a weir, had a fly past from two spitfires leaving Bournemouth Airshow.

It was was a great adventure. 20km of paddling later we arrived at a weir just on the edge of Christchurch where we clambered out, deflated and walked the last km back to the car.

Last edited by Inflatable Adventurist; 3rd-September-2017 at 10:23 AM.